HOPEWELL — Concert-goers this season at Constellation Brands-Marvin Sands Performing Arts Center have an advantage over previous years when it comes to taking photos and videos and using social media such as Instagram and Facebook. Before a technology upgrade done before this season, such activity at the outdoor performance venue on Finger Lakes Community College campus in Hopewell was unpredictable at best.

With the boom in recent years of patrons sharing their experience in real time on smart phones, the system often overloaded, making it impossible to even send a simple text message.

Before a wireless upgrade that put CMAC on its own, dedicated cell site, the concert venue was covered by a couple local cell sites, but they weren't located right at the venue itself, explained John O'Malley, public relations manager for the Upstate New York Region of Verizon Wireless. “So traffic from CMAC was competing with other local traffic on those sites, which sometimes resulted in call blocking or difficulty completing a data connection when thousands of people tried to get on the network at the same time.”

“It's a fact of life today that concert-goers and even performers are very active on social media when they attend or perform a concert,” said O’Malley. When you have a large group of people in one location trying to do that at the same time, it uses a lot of network bandwidth, he said.

CMAC seats 5,000 under the shell and thousands more on the lawn.

O’Malley said that the recent network enhancements at CMAC are boosting voice and high-speed wireless capacity on site to make for an overall better experience. Tracking the new capability during the first few concerts of the season showed the network performed better than in past years, said O’Malley. “We will continue to monitor our traffic stats during the larger events and make adjustments as necessary,” he said.

Ginny Clark, CMAC president and executive director, said the immediate Verizon access is also helping internal operations. Employees and others helping run CMAC are benefitting from the response time to internal calls, emails and texts, she said.

“Patrons are thrilled with the enhanced service that they now get on site at CMAC,” she added, noting the easier access for emails, texts and pictures.

Axcess Ontario contractor Andy Lukasiewicz, director of broadband services at ECC Technologies, explained more of what is behind the new system. Axcess Ontario is the not-for-profit corporation that arranged for the building of a fiber-optic infrastructure throughout the county, which Axcess Ontario oversees.

The new system was possible due to CMAC’s proximity (about 1/3 mile) from the Axcess Ontario backbone, said Lukasiewicz. Under the arrangement, CMAC’s carrier is paying Axcess Ontario to lease the fiber into CMAC to provide voice and data services to CMAC operations. The wireless carrier (Verizon) pays Axcess Ontario to lease the dark fiber.

Page 2 of 2 - With the added cellular capacity, concert-goers are having “a more reliable high-speed experience with fewer cutoff calls and better data performance,” said Lukasiewicz.

The new system is noteworthy from a safety point of view, he said, adding, "the improved capacity will help ensure reliable fast communications for emergency response."